and as we wind on down the road
by themonkeytwin
Summary: A collection of comment fic. All prompted by dialogue from the episodes, but otherwise unrelated. Ranges all over the people and places of the SPN-verse, so something for everyone. Or most people. Some people, anyway. Attempts to stay within Show canon. M rating now for the occasional horror bit.
1. ain't completely alone

**Disclaimer:** not mine at all, at all.

**Notes:** so I got sucked into comment fic. Happens to the best of us. Since this seems to be the only thing I feel like writing at the moment, I figured I better start posting them, whatever they are. Otherwise everyone will think I'm dead. Also? Staying away from dealing with death and woe is a lot harder in SPN fic than _Leverage_. Just sayin'.

The comm prompts are quotes from canon, and the fic is anything that inspires.

1.01 Pilot

**Dean: I can't do this alone.**  
**Sam: Yes, you can.**  
**Dean: Yeah. Well, I don't want to.**

* * *

**Ain't Completely Alone**

Bobby, Ellen  
pre-series  
spoilers up to 2.06 No Exit

* * *

When he woke, he knew in his waters that something wasn't right. After – well, he was honestly beginning to forget how many – years of hunting, that was something you looked to.

Then he heard it, the dim sound that had reached into his dreams and pulled him out, and it was brutally familiar. Reluctance replaced alarm and he closed his eyes again.

Unfortunately, he couldn't do the same with his ears. He endured less than a minute before dragging himself out of bed and casting around for pants. Of all the things a man could face in boxers, this was not one.

At the door he paused, running a hand through his unkempt hair. Greasy. But the only cap he had with him was the one with the pig on it, and damned if he was gonna wear that right now. Quietly, he slipped out into the hallway and took two hesitant steps before he realized he wasn't alone.

Well ... crap.

That little huddle was an awfully familiar shape. The head lifted, and wide, frightened eyes peered up at him from behind white-blonde bangs, and for a second he was tempted to look away. He'd seen that look on John's boys before, too, when they were younger – Dean especially, although he got good at hiding it – and it always twisted sick in his gut. There was precious little to be grateful for in Karen's death, but at least she hadn't left any children behind to be raised by his sorry ass. Left behind to be lost and frightened and alone because their world was crumbling around a wreck of an adult who'd lost their soulmate in the job of holding that world up.

"Hey, Miss Jo," he started, keeping his voice low, but got no further before the angel-faced tyke scrambled to her feet and fled silently back to her room, a vanishing wisp of pale hair and nightgown.

Case in point, right there: he was secretly relieved. He didn't know how to deal with a crying little girl. He didn't know much better how to deal with a crying woman, either, but there was no kind of choice going. Pastor Jim had a room downstairs, but that was the coward's option, no mistake. Besides, the man had spent half the day conducting a hunter's funeral, and the other half dealing with the compound-interest grief and guilt of John Jackass Winchester, before resorting to drinking him under a table. That was a pastor who'd earned his sleep and then some.

The crack of the door let a soft line of light out, and when he got closer, the clearly wracking sobs of the strongest woman he knew. He waited for the courage to push it open, but when it didn't come, took a breath and put his hand to it anyway.

It took a second to find her, sitting on the floor, curled fetally against the side of her bed. She was rocking with the force of the pain trying to escape through her lungs, and he wanted nothing so much as to walk away from this stark replay of his own time of bereavement.

"Ellen," he said softly, wondering if she'd even hear him. He came a little closer and tried again. "Ellen."

She shuddered, acknowledging him with a twitch of her head and a brief, futile attempt to get herself under control. Then the next sob ripped from her, so he grabbed the box of kleenex from the bedside table, and sank down next to her silently on the floor.

For a few seconds, he felt her powerful pride strive to stem the tide of tears, but there was no holding that flood with gates already busted wide open. He knew the moment she gave in again, because she reached for him, clinging awkwardly with limbs askew; he shifted in closer and wrapped her up, letting her collapse against him.

"Shhsh," he murmured, more for an audible presence than to trying to suppress her. A few times he almost opened his mouth to say something, but what? "It's gonna be okay"? "Don't cry"? What? He couldn't bring himself to say _either_ of those things, or any of their nonsense variants.

It took time, but she began to subside. When she was a little calmer, he suddenly found the memory of young Dean Winchester's hardened face making him blurt, "Ellen, I – I think you might have scared Jo. I think she heard you."

The look of horror she gave him nearly made him bite his tongue off with remorse. "Oh, God, Bobby – I can't do this," she said, voice cracking. "I can't do it without him. I can't do this alone – Jo –" She broke off, a fresh overflow contorting her face.

Bobby rested his chin against her hair and rode out this wave with her, too, trying to think of what to say. It would be easier to stay silent, to let things be, but somehow John's boys weren't letting him. He wondered when he'd got so damn clucky, and then ignored the answering tendril of old wishing that he'd buried with Karen. It wasn't his life. It would never be.

"Ellen, I ain't got any right to say this to you, but can or can't, you _have_ to. You're all Jo's got. You grieve all you like, all you need" – and wasn't he just a hypocrite, dispensing advice none of them had ever been able to follow – "but don't you ever let yourself turn your back on tryin' to love her and protect her."

Her eyes, bloodshot and hopeless, rose to find his, seeking who knew what. "I don't think I can, Bobby," she whispered. "Bill..."

"That's fear talkin'. Fear and – and not thinkin' you'll ever heal from this pain." He almost gritted his teeth. If those kids' eyes weren't fresh in his mind, he never could have said such hard things to a new-made widow. "And ... sometimes some self-pity. Believe me, we've all done that dance. But Jo doesn't deserve for you to refuse to get up out of that mess."

Something stiffened in her eyes, but it didn't make her pull away from him. He watched her carefully, and saw the beginning of resolve sprout, way down in the bedrock. Relief grew in him to mirror it.

"I'm sorry, Ellen. I'm sorry it's this way, that you're left this on your own. But I ain't sorry it's you Jo's got. For what it's worth, I think if anyone can do it, you can. And I know it ain't much, but Jim and me, we'll be around. One call, and I'll come running. I promise you that. You ain't completely alone."

Ellen bowed her head for a long breath, then nodded. A final clench of her fists where they gripped his shirt, and she let go, reaching for the kleenex. It took her a few minutes, and half the box, to clean herself up, but she got there, getting unsteadily to her feet to dump the pile in the trash. A few tugs and tucks to straighten herself out and a final deep breath, and she met his eyes with steel in her spine.

He smiled a little, proud of her, and she placed a quick kiss on his cheek before slipping out the door to find her daughter.


	2. this feeling in my gut

1.06 Skin

**Dean: Remember when I said this wasn't our kind of problem?**  
**Sam: Yeah.**  
**Dean: Definitely our kind of problem.**

* * *

**This Feeling In My Gut**

Sam Wesson  
spoilers up to 4.17 It's A Terrible Life

* * *

Flick.

Flick.

Flick.

Sam Wesson stopped, staring at the playing card that, if he could be bothered to flick it into the trash can, would make him 15-and-0. He'd always had exceptional coordination for a geek, and this was just one more of those random, trivial skills he picked up because it was something to do. Something to pass the time, while out there, unbeknown to him, to anyone, ghosts went around _killing people_. While he sat in a cubicle and gave tech support.

He didn't know why Dean Smith's refusal to – what, to trust Sam's instinct? want to come on the road with him to fight ghosts? approve of him? – anyway, why it bothered him so much. Why it made him doubt himself.

_You don't want to go fighting ghosts with no health insurance!_

Sam felt petulance pull at his face, and shook it off with a grimace. He was 26 – old enough to do this on his own, and definitely too old to be pouting like a bitch. So what if Dean Smith was a douche with some fruity cleansing diet obsession? So what if he'd been mistaken about knowing who Dean really was under all that? What difference did it make if he agreed or not? Sam knew, in some dark bowel of his being, far below any rational argument anyone could make, that he was in the wrong life. Normal. Safe. Meaningless. _Wrong_.

It was just ... rationalize against it all he could, Dean's rejection had thrown him. It undermined his righteous determination to go out and hunt things, save people, his conviction that this was _his_ problem to deal with ... tempted him to stay at his day job and forget this ever happened.

He glanced at his clock: 3.47. He was going to be wrecked tomorrow – today – at work, but he'd already tried to sleep and couldn't.

He sighed. He supposed he'd better try again. He'd think all this through tomorrow, after all the excitement died down a little and he could reason more objectively. Maybe he _was_ being rash. Maybe tomorrow everything would become clear.


	3. the simple stuff

1.07 Hookman

**Sam: Be quiet.  
Dean: You be quiet!  
Sam: You be quiet!

* * *

**

**The Simple Stuff**

John and teen!chesters  
pre-series

* * *

John Winchester screwed his eyes shut and opened them again, but it didn't make a difference; the oncoming car lights were still blurring in time with the throbbing of his head, and the white lines on the road were shifting in his vision more than they should be. A squint at the Impala's clock said it was only 2230, but this made his third day straight with next to no sleep. So many wires were getting crossed in his head by now that he honestly couldn't tell if he were driving upside down. If he kept this up, he soon would be.

The pall in the Impala wasn't helping, either. In the back, Sam was sulking at having to up and leave a place with an hour's warning again (see how the boy liked Children & Family Services if his daddy got picked up for a gruesome set of events he had no explanation or alibi for), and in the front Dean had been quietly squirming for the last twenty minutes. Ever since John's exasperation had made itself felt. Or, more accurately, heard.

His body almost groaned with relief all on its own when he spotted a minor offramp with a decent shoulder. The crunch of gravel when he pulled off the road could make a lesser man cry.

"Dean, get out the alarm clock. I want to sleep for an hour, no more."

His eyes were already closed, but his ears recognized (unwillingly) one of those busy silences in which his sons communicated volumes with each other through expression alone. Then Dean spoke.

"I think I forgot it, Dad," he said, nervousness combining tellingly with a determined note.

At another time, John might care. "_Dammit_, Dean –" But right now, his head was swimming in dead ends. The only thing he was sure of was that he couldn't risk more than an hour, and he _couldn't_ keep driving.

"I'm sorry. I could drive..."

Third sure thing: he wasn't letting his fifteen year-old behind the wheel at night when he was in no state to watch over him.

"No."

"But –"

What was with the back-talk? "_Dean!_" ... Maybe he was even more tired than he'd thought, because he couldn't figure out how to stop the words punching out of his mouth. "How hard is it to just pack everything? How many times have we done this? I thought you knew better than this!"

"We were in a rush –"

Fourth sure thing: it wasn't Dean's fault. If it had been, he'd take the dressing down in silence, like the good soldier he was. The protest wasn't for his own benefit. It never was. And John _still_ couldn't get a leash on his own mouth; there was only one way to keep himself from saying anything worse. "Just – be quiet, Dean."

The simmering rage from the back seat, which he'd been ignoring, boiled over. "_You_ be quiet!"

Dean jumped on that quick. "Sam!"

"It's not fair, Dean!"

"Sammy, shut up –"

"_Both_ of you shut up!" John yelled, and instantly regretted it. The hush, thick with remorse, pounded in time with his head. He curled forward and laid his forehead against the wheel, just concentrating on breathing in. Breathing out. The simple stuff. Just for a minute.

Which was when, without warning, an almighty fart ripped through the silence from the passenger's side.

The whole world paused, a far more deeply uncertain silence gripping the car, until a snort escaped his youngest's attempts to stifle it.

As though that snort had tipped the scales in John's own frozen reaction, a huge guffaw burst out of his chest, throwing him back, shaking his whole body with laughter. He tried, with limited success, to roll down the window in between convulsions. Behind him, Sam was also laughing fit to bust a gut and trying to get his window down.

"I think it was the burrito –" began Dean, abashed, before his stomach gurgled loudly, and another fart escaped.

"For God's sake, son, open your window," John gasped out, before imploding into laughter again.

Dean obeyed, beginning to snicker as the release of laughter in the car infected him, too. "I told you we shouldn't have stopped at that stupid take-out," he groused. "It's been gas city down there for _hours_."

He hadn't said anything of the kind, but John couldn't care less. As he regained his breath – and the air in the car returned to being something he wanted to breathe – he felt calm for the first time in hours. Days. Weeks, maybe.

"Okay. The pair of you, go sit on the hood and look at stars for an hour. Make Sammy tell you all their names and constellations and the phases of the moon, okay? Then wake me up. One hour. Got it?"

Dean made a face, but didn't say anything. John raised his eyebrow. "If you can find anything else to look at out here in Nebraska, boy, be my guest. But don't get off that hood."

"Yessir," Dean said, checking his weapon like John taught him and getting out into the warm summer night air. Sam was already on the hood, pointing at the Milky Way, and John jammed his jacket under his head against the door. He stretched out on the seat and was out like a light in seconds, with a smile still twitching on his lips.


	4. a funeral in the end

1.06 Skin

**Dean: How many chances am I gonna have to see my own funeral?**

* * *

**A Funeral in the End**

Dean  
spoilers up to 5.04 The End

* * *

It was there in her eyes. Everyday, in her dead and constant eyes. She kept the faith as a gravemarker; she'd always kept the faith.

Each day he saw her rot, he knew what it meant. Knew it should twist the knife. Knew it should revolt wild within. A lifetime ago, it would. A lifetime ago, he scorned Heaven and flipped off Hell and laughed at the idea of his own funeral.

But he didn't look anymore, and he didn't say things like that anymore. And he didn't care anymore. He knew what it meant; knew his rusting baby was his own mute funeral, everyday.

But he didn't care.


	5. any couch in a storm

1.08 Bugs

**Dean: Wasn't that on Oprah?**  
**Sam: You watch Oprah?**

* * *

**Any Couch in a Storm**

Bobby, Rufus  
pre-series, spoilers up to 3.15 Time is on My Side

* * *

Drifting up from the murky depths of unconsciousness, it wasn't hard to tell where he was.

Ratty sofa with that ratty sofa scratch; chatter of the tv; tantalizing scent of black-label Walker being indulged in the mid-afternoon glare that was bouncing in through flimsy curtains. The fusty, familiar smell of a womanless home. Besides, he'd driven himself here, before collapsing on the front step.

"Don't pull any of'em stitches." The bored warning was punctuated by a sip, a swallow. "I ain't sewing you up again."

Bobby shifted slightly, feeling the tugs and push of pain through whatever Rufus had given him to dope him up, then grunted in acknowledgement. "'Kay."

Truth be told, it was more than he'd hoped for. It had been 50/50 that Rufus would even open the door, except maybe to push Bobby into the bushes so he wouldn't make a mess on the porch while bleeding to death. But there had been nowhere else to go.

Applause erupted from the tv, mingling with twanging and assertive female voices. Bobby squinted his eyes open against the light and cleared his throat back to life.

"You watching Oprah now, Rufus?"

"You're in my house, Bobby." There was belligerence enough in his voice to finish the sentence: _held together by my medical thread, floating above agony on my drugs, wearing my whole and unbloodied shirt, taking up my sofa, breathing my air_.

Bobby shut his mouth. Resting his head back on the cushion, he let the babble and wash of audience response fill his world. After a few minutes, he cracked his eyes open again.

"Has she gained weight again?" he asked, although a few minutes of watching made it a rhetorical question.

Eyeing Oprah's rounded figure as she put an arm around someone tearfully admitting something, Rufus shrugged. "Doesn't matter. She'll go twenty years. More."

"You think?" Bobby couldn't quite keep the skepticism out of his voice.

Rufus didn't answer, he just put down the empty glass and stood, pulling on a jacket. "Going for supplies," he said, in answer to Bobby's unvoiced question. "I was low even before you showed up."

Bobby's eyebrow twitched. "Booze or gauze?"

Rufus's eyes were cold when he leaned closer. "I know you ain't dumb enough to come here with a critter still around to come after you. Because I checked your tracks. The salt's down and there's a bag of goofer dust under the sofa, and if anything _is_ still after you, you pray you can lay it down before that gut wound kills you."

Bobby pressed his lips together over his first response, then nodded. "Yeah. Listen ... thanks."

Rufus straightened, not noticeably mollified. "I don't know and I don't care what you think of my choices. Or anyone. Once your insides and outsides'll stay where the Good Lord intended them to, I don't want you on my doorstep again."

Considering everything, Bobby wasn't offended. "You won't even lay eyes on me," he promised.

"Good." Rufus checked his pockets, then half turned toward the tv. "I can turn it off," he offered.

Bobby scratched his beard, half an eye still on the screen, then cleared his throat again. "Nah ... 's okay."


	6. bounced

1.13 Route 666

**Sam: My life was so simple. Just school, exams, papers on polycentric cultural norms.  
Dean: I guess I saved you from a boring existence.  
Sam: Occasionally I miss boring.

* * *

**

**Bounced**

Ash, randoms  
pre-series, spoilers up to 2.02 Everybody Loves A Clown

* * *

By the time the first punch flew, it didn't really matter what the argument was about. String theory, experimental programming logic, PBRs, classic American rock, hairstyles, the limitations of methodological naturalism ... never mattered. It was all the same thing: class snobbery. The place was pure meritocracy – right up to when you rocked up in plaid and a mullet.

Didn't matter that Ash could show up in class and out-think even the Asian contingent while the mother of all hangovers humped his skull. Didn't matter that he could wander into the wrong class (not even hungover, this time – still drunk) and ace the exam. Didn't matter that he could critique his profs' work as much as they critiqued his. (Actually, that part could be okay.) Will Hunting, eat your effing heart out.

The bloody crunch of cartilage was satisfying; Daniel Merenvald's nose would never be the same. Maybe it'd also help rearrange his thought processes vis-à-vis being a total douchebag, _asshole_. And not doing anything when his elitist douchebag friends laughed at his sweet, shy, blonde little girlfriend because she didn't know the difference between inductive reasoning and structural induction.

Not that he knew the girl; she just looked so embarrassed, and it wasn't like it was hard to pick a fight in this bar on any subject he felt like. It still all came back to class. He wasn't big, but he was wiry, and his daddy had bequeathed him a bloodline that demolished barfuls of all-comers with a non compos mentis grin and a broken bottle. Daniel's friends closing in, on the other hand, had been genealogically blessed to sit in front of screens twelve hours a day. Exercising their hands.

So when he was hauled in front of the dean, _again_, he had nothing to offer. It had all become a blur of blue blood and fists at that point, anyway. The fact that the only reason he wasn't still hanging head-first over the porcelain altar right now was because there was nothing left in his stomach was not helping; nor was the fact that, actually, he quite liked the dean. He knew the dean liked him, too, but Ash really hadn't given him much help toward protecting him over the last two years. Really, it was a miracle he'd lasted this long at this damn school.

"You know he's going to file a complaint," the dean said. "I can't keep this from the committee this time. I can probably argue for a suspension..."

Ash took a breath and made his tone civil; the dean didn't deserve his contempt. "Yeah ... thanks. But just have me expelled, already."

The brief look of pain on the older man's face surprised Ash, but his next words didn't. "We've been over this, Mr Miles. Expulsion isn't the answer, here."

"All due respect, Dean, expulsion should have been your only answer. You should never have let me in."

The dean shook his head. "That's not true. I wish I could ... I wish I could show you, Asher, that you _do_ belong here. That all this animosity is just superficial, that your mind and this school have so much to give to one another, to the _world_. That you could find your place here if you would just..."

Maybe it was the hangover, but something in the dean's tone made Ash's eyes sting. He sat in silence, all the obvious comebacks fleeing the scene of the crime, before he eventually cleared his throat. "I, ah ... I don't think so. I can't fit in here. I won't. It's just not gonna happen. And the committee already knows that anyhow. Don't waste your breath on me."

That last part came out less of a command and more of a plea, and that was weak, but the dean reluctantly nodded anyway. For the tiniest second, Ash wished he hadn't. "Where will you go?"

It was the question of a friend, not a Dean of Undergraduate Students, and Ash's mind cleared – cleared with the vision of boundless bright skies and endless rolling roads, crap motel beds and the smell of beer soaked into the very walls of pokey old roadhouses. The smell of freedom. "Aw, hell – where I belong."

The dean raised a wry eyebrow and plucked one of his business cards from the holder on his desk. "Oh, wonderful. Well, if you ever pick yourself up from under a pool table and decide you want to give this place another shot, or if you need my help, call me."

Ash took the card with an unrepentant grin and no offense, and within two hours his clothes and his laptop were riding shotgun in his truck. He pulled up in front of the dome, clambered up onto his roof, and summoned up every barroom-brawl and metal show roar his diaphragm ever held.

"TAKE YOUR IHTFP AND GO SCREW YOURSELF!" he hollered, making the appropriate gesture with both hands at arms' length, getting more than a few startled looks from passing students. He held the position and turned a full 360 to make sure they didn't miss his point, before slithering dizzily back into the cab. This hangover was one mean son of a bitch, but all things considered, that had felt _good_. Goodbye to snobs, goodbye to morning classes, goodbye to _boring_. He did a victory lap of noise pollution, leaning on the horn the whole way around, and peeled out with a squeal of tires before campus security could catch up with him.

Three weeks later, he woke up in Nebraska to the itch of pool table felt and the tough face of a woman who couldn't hide the kindness in her eyes. Hovering behind her shoulder was a girl who looked like her age couldn't decide if it could drink or not, and her mouth couldn't decide if it was belligerent or curious, and Ash knew he'd found where he belonged.


	7. the cookie gambit

1.10 Asylum

**Dean: See, that attitude right there? That is why I always get the extra cookie.

* * *

**

**The Cookie Gambit**

Jess, Brady, Sam  
pre-series, spoilers up to 5.20 The Devil You Know

* * *

"Okay – you got them?" Jess settled her bookbag and grabbed one of the tupperwear boxes.

"Yeah, yeah... Mmph." He grinned at her around a mouthful of cookie.

"Brady!"

"Quality control," he said after swallowing. "You can't give poisoned cookies to unsuspecting students. They'll think they're getting something delicious and wholesome, and eat the lot, and then you'll have _destroyed_ them from the inside out, and they'll be all 'eeerch, I'm _dying_.' Prof O'Neil would definitely call that ethically questionable."

She laughed, then wrinkled her nose. "Ugh, don't remind me. I've got another fifty pages to read by tonight. How do I always end up doing this stuff instead of my homework?"

"Because you're a ministering angel in disguise and God will reward you."

She rolled her eyes. "Come on."

"No, it's true." Brady assumed a dramatic pose, hampered by the tupperwear in either hand. "I'm having a vision ... this very afternoon you will meet the man of your dreams and his love for you will transform your very lives."

Jess held the door open with her foot and searched for her keys with her spare hand. "Yeah, uh huh. Tell me more. I think my moon is in the ascendancy this month."

"Ah, sounds dirty –"

Jess shook her head, but her smile was indulgent. Truth be told, she was just glad Brady had agreed to do this with her today. Usually it was a tradition she and Karen did together, but he'd been acting so strange lately, and she was worried about him. He almost seemed like his old endearing self as he juggled the boxes to open the outer door for her, but she couldn't quite shake the sense of a trailing darkness.

But once outside in the sweet late Fall air, all of that was forgotten. It was hard to believe it was almost the end of the semester in this California weather, but there was a crispness clinging to the golden afternoon. Clumps of students were scattered on the lawns, in various combinations of studying and snoozing. She popped the lid off and approached the first group.

"Free cookies? Fresh from the oven," she said, holding them out, while Brady offered his to the next group further on.

"Good for the brain, good for the soul," he proclaimed grandly. "Meets all your studying needs and they're not even chemically addictive. Might not help you pass exams, but guaranteed to make you feel better about failing."

She grinned and left him to it, but after a few minutes, she noticed he'd stopped moving and was talking to someone, only halfway through his first container. He caught her eye and gestured her over.

The guy he was talking to was sitting with his back to her, and the first impression she had of him was _Hey. Shoulders_. Then he craned around and the light caught his eyes under a shaggy sweep of hair and the world slipped its alignment, narrowing to this one patch of grass, this one sunlit look.

And then he smiled – a quirk of the lips that was both shy and sure, and she forgot everything. Just, everything. She could barely hear Brady introducing him.

"Uh – oh – Sam?" she managed, trying to rearrange the load in her hands so she could shake his outstretched one, but suddenly her hair and her bag and everything was caught and pulling and this was going to be a horrible, horrible embarrassment.

"Oh – yes – here, let me get that." He uncoiled to his feet and relieved her of the cookies, all before she even registered what was going on. Then her freed hand was engulfed by his. "Winchester. Sam Winchester."

"Jess. Jessica." She smiled, somehow remembering that was the thing to do, and then he was still holding her hand and looking down – so far down – at her and not saying anything and still holding her hand. "So, you're ... friends with Brady?"

As if he only just realized he was still holding her hand, he let go and glanced at Brady. "Yeah. I was wondering why he was late, but –" he gestured with the cookies "– this does explain it. I think I'd be late too."

"Late?"

"He asked me to meet him here –"

"Oh, snap, you know what? I forgot, I told Todd I'd hang out with him, too..." Brady pulled out his phone. "Man. Jess, I'm so sorry. I know I said I'd help – hey, Sam, are you busy? Can you help Jess distribute largesse to the starving masses? She's got reading to finish after this. She's on a strict timetable. You can't let her down. She's a regular Mother Teresa."

"Sure," Sam said with a twinkle in his eye for her. "Anything to help Mother Teresa." He took Brady's cookies from him, and Jess barely even noticed Brady leaving. "So, um – what are you actually doing?"

"Oh." Jess laughed. "Yeah, I guess it's kinda weird. Last year my friend Karen and I needed a break from midterm studying, so we decided to bake cookies for people. You know, just whoever, and then give them away. And then we ended up doing it again around finals – so now I do it whenever I feel the need to de-stress."

"Just to give cookies to people?"

"Yeah, you know. Just because."

"That's..." He laughed. "Wow. That's like the best thing I've heard for ages. Thank you for letting me be a part of it."

No late-Fall chill in the world could touch the warmth fluttering under her ribs right now. "No problem. Next time you can help us bake them too. Really get in on the ground floor of the do-gooder business."

Sam caught her eye, and that shy smile was back, earnest and eager. "I'd like that." He inspected their fast-dwindling supplies. "All chocolate-chip?"

She lifted her nose haughtily. "There's no other kind worth making. It's _classic_."

"Hey, of course. Far be it from me to argue over the relative merits of cookie flavors. Especially with a professional do-gooder."

She sighed. "Sadly, I don't get paid."

He frowned severely. "I thought you said this was a business I'm getting into, here."

"Strictly non-profit."

"Well, in that case, I'm keeping these last three for us." He turned back toward where he'd been sitting with an expectant look at her.

"Us?"

"Yeah. You had reading to do, right?" She nodded. "Well, come read. There's at least two good hours of sunlight left before it gets too cold out here. And enjoy the delicious fruits of your labor. And keep me from self-destructing over my own terrible fate."

"What terrible fate is that?" she asked as they settled down on the grass together.

He rummaged in his bag and drew out a book with a flourish. "It's statistics. Both cruel and unusual."

"Ooh. That's nasty. Glad I never have to do it."

"So ... what's stressing you out?"

She looked up and met his eyes, startled, but warmed by the ready sympathy in them. "Oh ... well, nothing special. Just finals coming up, assignments... I didn't get to go home over Thanksgiving, so I miss my family, you know?"

An expression she couldn't identify flashed across his face, but then that irresistible little smile was back, and she felt like she could tell him anything. Like he wanted her to tell him everything.

"But you'll get to go home over winter break?"

It was a full two hours later, and indeed quite cool, before either of them remembered the reading they needed to get done. And it was a lot longer than that before they cared.


	8. i protect him

1.13 Route 666

**Cassie: Why didn't you tell me?**  
**Mrs. Robinson: I thought I was protecting them. And now there's no one left to protect.**

* * *

**I Protect Him**

Dean, ish.  
spoilers up to 6.01 Exile On Main St.

* * *

I am steel and chrome, rubber and grease, fuel and fire, speed and release.

I carry him where he hunts, cradle him while he sleeps, embrace him when he loves.

I keep faith as home and as fortress. I wrap my frame around the impact. I stand under his blows that rupture and his hands that restore. I give him my shape and shine and tune to tend and forget to worry for a little while, just a little while.

I protect him.

/

I am leather and thread, sweat and scent, slaughter and tannin, flex and endurance.

I break the wind from his back, slide the rain from his neck, hold the heat of his skin in mine.

I turn claws and fangs. I fold away the pieces of his life, tools of his trade. I serve as pillow or as blanket. I drape him in whispers of yesteryear, odors of the father never truly faded.

I protect him.

/

I am stainless steel and ivory, spring and hammer, powder and violence, sight and grip.

I join to his hand, bark to his pull, bite upon the line of his eye.

I spit death and purification. I battle furious and relentless at his wielding. I am true and straight, I come at his call. I put down those that come against him. I never jam.

I protect him.

/

I am lips and eyes, curves and skin, strength and vulnerability, woman and lover.

I welcome him into my home, invite him into my life, draw him into my body.

I feed him and touch him and tell him he is alive. I hold vigil over his sleep and shake him from his nightmares and kiss him in his darkness. I grant him haven in silence and space, a family with no cruel questions. I take him as he is.

I protect him.

/

I am burden and meaning, cursed and retrieved, hunter and monster, counterpart and brother.

I anchored him in the chaos, drove him through the fight, broke him with my failures.

I killed for him and died for him. I dragged Lucifer into the Pit for him. I gave him a true home on the power of a promise, a family who do not destroy him. I watch his perimeter and prowl the land, accumulate allies and hunt evil. I become what I must to make the world safe for him. I stay away from him.

I protect him.


	9. in the usual way

1.17

**Dean: I hate to agree with authority figures of any kind, but ... the cops might be right about this one.**

* * *

**In the Usual Way**

Bobby, Karen Mills  
spoilers for 5.15, Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid

* * *

It begins in the usual way, somewhere between ten and twelve years ago. She's a young, bright, tough officer transfered to Sioux Falls; he's a worn-down, used-up, guilt-ridden crotchety widower accustomed to making a periodic drunken nuisance of himself on the town.

It is on one of his binges of alcohol and obstreperousness that they first meet. She is gentle, even concerned, to begin with, getting a glimpse of the pain below the hostility and giving the town drunk a pass. She isn't thanked for it – in fact, the opposite – and it doesn't happen again.

* * *

It develops along the usual lines. She falls in love with a nice, normal local guy, and settles down to start a family full of promise, her intelligence, integrity, and streetsmarts making her a natural for sheriff when election comes around; he half-heartedly runs a scrapyard, devours lore on the supernatural, and slowly becomes a hub of the hunting underground in spite of himself.

They make their dates with booze and shouting and squad cars and paperwork a regular thing. They even have a song. He makes a habit of marinating in whisky shots and Neil Young's "Old Man" on repeat before finding something to set him off, and the jukebox is often still playing it when she arrives to throw him in lockup overnight. Although he'd never admit it, somewhere deep down he sees and values the kindness in her, the natural empathy she has never been able to bury entirely under a brusque exterior. And although she would never admit it, there's something in his stubborn helpless rage against the world that makes sense to her.

* * *

There comes the usual twist: in the course of events of the apocalypse, the Rider of the pale horse makes a visit to town that turns bad in more ways than one, ending up in a bloodbath of headshots at Bobby's house, one hell of a bonfire, and a new understanding. She loses everything from a sense of normality to her husband and revenant son; he lives his every guilty nightmare over again while stone-cold awake.

This time, she finds him before the shouting starts, drops a quarter in the jukebox herself, and takes a seat. This time, the shouting doesn't start. Neither do words, but a shoulder offered by one who understands is quite a thing. They make their dates with booze and silence and ghosts and regrets a regular thing, and the song comes too, and betweentimes they can do their jobs and be who they need to be for all the people who depend on them.

* * *

They grow closer through the usual things. She covers for him when the heat catches his scent; he saves her life when an unnatural beastie catches hers; between them, they wage the war on the A side and the B side to protect innocence.

With the apocalypse done with and the defcon level down, attempts at conversation begin. Familiarity grounded in conflict gives way to trust grounded in familiarity. The currency of favors and alliance eases toward the currency of friendship and respect.

Which is why, with Rufus two statelines over and the boys in the old country, Bobby picks up the phone and dials a number that he doesn't have to look up.

* * *

"Hi, uh, Jodie... No, no, everything's fine. There's nothing wrong. I just ... uh, look, I know you're kind of mad at me for what I asked you to do. And I don't blame you. And I owe you, big time. But you got no idea what... Well, anyhow. Are you free? I got a special bottle of scotch here wanting a celebration that's long overdue, but I'm kind of on my own, and ... well, I guess what I'm asking is you come celebrate with me. Bring any Vandross album you want. I ... look, I know this is kind of weird, but ... you know what, nevermi– Yeah? Really? Uh, thanks. See you soon, then."

Two hours later, with R&B crooning innocuously in the background, and the chatter of rain falling outside, he finds himself swirling the last swallow of scotch in the bottom of his glass, telling a very long and complicated story. In the rosy burn of companionship and alcohol, maybe she had asked, or maybe he had offered, but either way she is learning why he isn't in a wheelchair anymore. Why he'd been in one in the first place. Why those long legged boys who'd flitted through her town are possibly the two most dangerous living souls in the world and why they owed everything to them.

Eventually he runs out of things to say, and she'd stopped asking questions a while back. Then suddenly it strikes him – how much he'd just told her. A cop. How had he forgotten she was a cop? They all drew a line somewhere and the things he'd done in the last few years – hell, the last few _days_ – crossed every one of them. His self-indulgent yarn just put others at risk – others who trusted him, depended on him, who'd be implicated. But even with that, he feels a deeper fear creep in: of looking up and seeing revulsion in her eyes. Contempt for a man so far gone down the path of means that he can barely remember what direction principle lies in. Some celebration this was. He'd just gone and destroyed the respect of the only really decent person he knows.

He can't bring himself to say anything else, and he can't look up if his life depends on it. Then she clears her throat.

"When you said I didn't know about what you'd done for this town ... you weren't kidding." Her voice is soft, and not completely steady. He can't keep himself from looking up if his life depends on it.

Dark eyes sparkle with discreet tears, caught in the corners and the lashes, too proud to fall. The open sympathy in her expression reaches straight into his chest and wraps around his heart without even asking permission. Perhaps it was the license of the alcohol, or of what he'd just shared, but her hand also reaches out and takes his without permission. Slowly, reverently, she holds it in hers, touches it and explores it, as if it is extraordinary to her. It's harder to breathe, but he barely notices, watching the absorption of her face, absorbed in _him_.

She looks up again. "Do you ... did you make another copy? Of that photo?"

He doesn't have to ask which one she means. Nor does he have to think about where he keeps it. He goes and pulls it out of the drawer, and hands it to her. She holds it carefully, like a precious artifact, studying the faces, not having to ask who is who.

Bobby clears his throat, too. "You kind of remind me of her," he tells her, and her eyes fly up to his.

"Ellen?"

He nods. "A bit."

She shakes her head, a small smile on her face. "I ... thank you." He hasn't sat back down, and she slowly rises to her feet, eyes never leaving his. Her hand comes up and touches his face briefly. He wishes it would stay there longer and then worries that he wishes it. "So, you're ... free, now." It's halfway between a statement and a question.

He swallows, because a whole lot more seems to be going on than what's on the surface and he's scared that it's probably only going on in his head. "Uh ... yeah."

She smiles, and draws him into the living room, and turns up the music. "In that case, we should dance. It'd be a poor celebration without dancing. And it would be a shame to waste those legs of yours."

Which is how, a year after selling his soul and dying in the apocalypse, Bobby Singer finds himself his own man on his own two feet with a beautiful woman enticing his arms around her. And when he objects that she's young enough to be his niece, she laughs and puts her head on his shoulder, and when he worries about what their town will think, she smiles and twines fingers into his hair, and when he tells her he's nothing but a worn-down, used-up, guilt-ridden, crotchety old widower, she looks up and tells him to kiss her.

And so, in the usual style, they fall in love.


	10. watched

2.13

**Dean: Okay, all right. You know what? I get it. You've got faith. That's — hey, good for you. I'm sure it makes things easier. I'll tell you who else had faith like that — mom. She used to tell me when she tucked me in that angels were watching over us. In fact, that was the last thing she ever said to me.  
Sam: You never told me that.  
Dean: Well, what's to tell? She was wrong. There was nothing protecting her.**

* * *

**Watched**

Mary, John  
Spoilers to 5.16, Dark Side of the Moon

* * *

She looked around the so-familiar little-boy room, the ache of it plain in her eyes. She reached behind her instinctively, seeking the strength of calloused fingers.

The feeling of his hand meeting hers, twining them together in this place, broke something in her that she'd been holding tight for far too long. Without thought, she melted back against his chest, letting him wrap around her, closing her eyes against the soft brush of his lips on her hair. It didn't feel strange, as she'd been so afraid it would. In spite of everything, relief washed through her heart. It just felt like ... home.

She turned to smile at him, to tell him so, but the expression on his face made the words freeze in her throat. His eyes were focused, fierce, sweeping the room. When they came to rest, she followed their suspicious look to a little porcelain cherub, sitting innocently on the dresser. It was every bit as familiar as the room itself could be, but that was the problem. It had always stayed in the nursery.

She tensed, dropping his hand to touch metal at her side, ready to draw at a moment's notice. He held his finger to his lips, crossing the room to examine it more closely.

When he looked back at her, she tugged her ear, asking him, _Bugged?_ He nodded, his expression as much as saying _I think so_. Her mouth tightened, a chill of desecration running down her spine. The moment you forgot you were in enemy territory, you could lose everything.

He gestured at the four-year-old-sized raincoat hanging beside her, and she unhooked it, swallowing against the memories it dislodged. Kneeling, she spread it on the floor and sketched a sigil, then gingerly draped it over the figurine.

It would be more than enough protection against the angelic bug, but they drew away from it anyway, instinctively huddling together in whispering range. She could feel his scrutiny on her but couldn't look up; she knew she needed to be strong, to be smart, to be – well, to be a hunter about this. Ready for anything that the angels, watching for them, searching for them, could send their way. Fight or flee. But in this room, right now, she couldn't quite pull it together. It was all too much, and she couldn't let him see it.

But, of course, he saw it anyway. The days of being able to hide so much of herself from him seemed to be well and truly over. "Hey," he said softly, cupping her cheek and tilting her face to his so his eyes could complete the question.

"It's just ... this room..." She shook her head. "John, this is our son's _heaven_. Just ... a simple _bedroom_. And Sam..." She took a deep breath, hardly containing the tears. "What I ... let in..."

John pulled her back into his arms, and it smelled warm and sharp like motor oil and grease in the sun, like _him_. It was a smell that, not even a month ago, she never thought she'd smell again. She squeezed her eyes shut and pressed into the fuzz of his flannel shirt, feeling the years and experiences that separated them – hunting, haunting, Heaven, Hell – beginning to shift, to knit together like teeth in a zipper. There was understanding there, on both sides, woven out of pain and regret. Perhaps even the way to forgiveness.

"Mary," he said, and the gruffness in his voice was more than just the gravel she lived with and loved for ten years. "Our family wouldn't have existed otherwise."

She wouldn't look up, couldn't meet his eyes and still ask the damning question. "Was it worth it?"

He stilled around her, but there was no loosening of his embrace. "Maybe not," he said eventually, but before she could stiffen, pull away from him, he continued, "but I'd pay the price again." Very slowly, feeling his way along long-disused pathways of intimacy, he turned and pressed a kiss to her temple, lingering there. "All of it," he whispered against her, the unfamiliar rasp of his stubble reinforcing that this was no memory, no fantasy. They were here, now, together. She _was_ free, and he _had_ found her.

She let her cheek slide across it, savoring it, letting it lead them both to where they wanted to be. The first touch of lips was careful, cherishing, but quickly became deeper. And _deeper_. Until they had to break apart just to breathe something that wasn't each other.

John dropped his forehead to hers with a soft, throaty laugh. "I, uh... Until we figure out this stuff up here, we probably shouldn't do that too much. I'm ... having trouble thinking."

She echoed his laugh. "We do need to figure stuff out, don't we?" She eyed him from two inches away, tugging where her fingers had tangled into his shirt. "Pity." Her gaze fell on the football clock, thoughts of their sons never far below the surface. "Do you think Ash found them yet?"

"He will. He's the best at this stuff." He saw her face and chuckled. "Your prejudices against hunters are kind of cute, you know that?"

She raised an eyebrow but refused to rise to that. "Just as long as he remembers not to give us up," she said sourly.

"He knows the stakes. He won't let the boys get sidetracked looking for us."

She nodded reluctantly, noticing the clock again. "Let's not give Zachariah any more leverage against them, either."

"Yeah..." He took a deep breath and pulled her hand into his, caught on something more before they departed this place. "Mary ... downstairs, in this memory..." He swallowed, thumb brushing over the gold on her ring finger. "I need you to know – I would never – I'm not that guy. I mean, anymore. I'll never take you for granted again... I haven't... I won't..." He finally looked up, searching her, needing to know she understood what he was saying. "I promise."

She smiled up at him, refusing to let tears fall. "Oh, John – I know." She reached up, taking hold of his lapels and gripping him close, letting her body settle along his. "Here's the deal. You and me – we're doing this together. As long as you, me, and this place lasts, I'm at your side and I've got your back. And in return ... you can have mine. You got me?"

He battled with a twisting smile to get something out, but his voice failed him too, and eventually he wiped a sniff against his sleeve to manage a hoarse, "Yeah."

It was all she needed.


	11. the advantages of being older

2.17 Heart

**Sam: Why do you get always get to hang out with the girls?**  
**Dean: Because I'm older.**

* * *

**The Advantages of Being Older**

Bela Talbot, Gert Case  
spoilers up to 3.15 Time Is On My Side

* * *

The shrill jangle of her cell phone broke her concentration, and the spirits fled. Bugger. She'd been getting somewhere.

But one glance at the caller ID and she answered immediately. "Gert? I'm kind of busy here." But she knew that. Gert was a pro; she didn't call for no reason. "What is it?"

"Those boys you told me about. The Winchesters? They were just here, asking about Sheila."

Bela froze. "You're sure?"

Gert sounded amused. "Tall, gorgeous, stand-out shoulders ... classic rock aliases? Pretty sure, honey."

"_Bugger_." Bela put as much annoyance in that as she could. After all, she _was_ bloody annoyed. Hopefully it was enough to disguise the little thrill running up her spine. It was a long time since she had a challenge so amusing as the Winchesters. Or so handsome.

The wry note in the older lady's husky voice said Bela hadn't fooled Gert one bit. It also made the suggestion implicit in her reply sound mischievously dirty. "You know, I think they parked along the waterfront."

Bela bounced to her feet.

"If you hurry, you might get to it before they do," Gert prompted, but Bela suspected she was doing it just to be annoying, rather than because she thought Bela actually needed to be encouraged. She had already done the timing arithmetic in her head.

"Yes, yes," Bela couldn't keep from snapping back as she raced out the door, and thought she heard a chuckle. She wasn't sure quite when she'd let the old girl get to know her so well, which was discomfiting, because Bela Talbot did not do anything so gauche as form attachments. Not that it would matter if...

"So how did you play it?" she asked, ruthlessly slamming the lid on that. There would be no "if". She would not let it.

"Vain gullible cougar," Gert replied with a wicked laugh that pulled a delighted echo from Bela, brightening her mood considerably. Maybe the sly friendship that had crept up between them was not so inexplicable. "The tall one – Sam? – darling, he is just all kinds of delicious. You should have seen his face."

"Oh, perfect." Bela gave another peal of laughter, picturing the scene. Gert may only play the con for the sport of it – it's not as though she needed the money – but Bela had quickly learned that Gert's talent as a roper far outweighed the value of her social network of the rich and exploitable. She had no doubt that Gert had performed the scene beautifully.

Reaching the street, she immediately spotted the conspicuous beast Dean Winchester called a car, two blocks away, complete with an entire lack of tall, dimwitted hunters. _Oh, perfect_.

"We can use this," she said. The idea wasn't so much inspiration as foregone conclusion.

Gert sounded less convinced. "Are you sure that's a good idea? Just because that Dean boy ruffles your feathers doesn't mean you should –"

"_Please_," Bela sneered convincingly. Friend or not, there was no reason for Gert to know all the ways Dean Winchester was an uncomfortable presence in her life. _No one_ needed to know what they had in common, and as for the rest... "He's just a slightly more interesting diversion than most. Tell me you don't want to make Sam squirm a little bit more."

"His blush was adorable and his ass was perky, but I'm not putting this job in jeopardy." Gert sounded determined. "This is for Sheila."

Bela checked the street casually as she approached the driver's side. "Believe me, they'll be poking around whether we use them or not. We're far better off making them play our game than letting them stumble on it. Which they will, it's only a matter of time. And they do have some useful proficiencies."

On a whim, she tried the handle and discovered she didn't have to bother breaking in. She shook her head. They deserved to have their car taken; in fact, she was teaching them a valuable lesson. Sliding behind the wheel, it took about two seconds to make the beast roar to life, and in spite of herself she smiled. Something as petty as auto theft suddenly sounded ever so much sexier.

"Alright," Gert agreed easily. "What have you got in mind?"

Bela's smile widened. This was going to be _fun_.


	12. weakness

3.03 Bad Day at Black Rock

**Dean: What is wrong with you, huh? She lying, you gotta know that, don't you? She knows what your weakness is, it's me.**

* * *

**Weakness**

Sam Winchester, Adam Milligan, Lucifer, Michael  
spoilers up to 5.22 Swan Song  
**WARNING cage!fic**

* * *

I didn't spend much time thinking about Hell. About what it would be like in the Cage. I could not afford to; dwelling on what awaited me down there could only weaken at my determination to jump.

So I shut that part of me away and focused on the mission and if I thought about it at all, it was only to do everything I could to make sure I saw it through. I would atone. I would save the world. I would save my brother. I would overcome the evil inside me; I would finally know I am _good_, if only by damning myself to Hell.

I couldn't always keep it out. But never, in the darkest of thoughts, did I expect this. I thought it would just be me. Me and Lucifer, and I could just keep fighting – the way Dad taught me, the way Dean taught me. Forever, until there was nothing left to fight with. I'm not delusional, I knew I'd lose. But I also knew that, finally, I would be the only one to suffer because of it.

I raise my head to meet my little brother's eyes, and I break into pieces all over again. I've lost count how many times and how many ways a person can come apart.

We're decades past the moment Lucifer and Michael convinced Adam to pick up a scalpel. The poor kid, he was so ... tormented. I didn't blame him. But I'd run out of ways to protect him a long time ago; every impulse to do so was like torture catnip to them, and if this meant they'd stop scourging him in front of me, if he could get some relief, the work he went to on me was a small price to pay.

We're years past the moment Lucifer suggested to me that maybe I _could_ save him. I honestly don't know if I really believed him, but by then anything seemed possible. If I could just destroy Adam _enough_, if I could take him down to motes and cut them up too, maybe he'd be gone.

We're months past the moment I knew he'd never be gone. That neither of us would ever be gone. There are bits of both of us all over this Cage, and there are archangels hating each other through us, and I don't really have anything else to do for the rest of eternity. Who knows? Maybe while it's my turn I'll discover something that really will help. I always was good at research.

There's a knife in my hands. And I know just where to start.


	13. dark and depressing

2.18 Hollywood Babylon

**McG: Brad, this is a horror movie.**  
**Brad: And who says horror has to be dark? It's sort of depressing, don't you think?**

* * *

**Dark and Depressing**

Dean Winchester, Lisa Braeden, Ben Braeden  
spoilers up to 6.01 Exile On Main Street (also, _The Neverending Story_)

* * *

Lisa was careful. She avoided asking questions, usually, but she was figuring out the stuff he could handle, the stuff he couldn't, the stuff she didn't have a clue about yet. It was hard work; he didn't often say much and she made too many mistakes, and his strengths and fragilities were nothing like any other man she'd ever met. But she was careful and she was getting there and she'd known from the moment he turned up on her doorstep without Sam that she was never going to give up on him.

Sometimes she caught a knowing look. Sometimes he volunteered a strategic detail that yielded more insight than a week of watching. Sometimes when she found she did have to ask, there was this odd pause of restraint and meditation before he answered. It made her throat close up a little, like he knew too well what she was doing. Like he was doing what he could to meet her halfway, to help her help him.

And then there was that helpless look he would shutter away from her, that deep, frozen silence, when he just ... couldn't. Those were the times when it was more like something was clawing at her throat, and she'd put her arms around him if he'd let her, and let him have his space if he didn't, and save her tears for later so he didn't have to bear them on top of everything else.

In spite of the rough patches and the setbacks, they were getting better at being a team, at keeping him stable and consistently functional and her aware of his general state. Which was why it startled her when Dean got up suddenly and walked away from the tv, with a particular kind of casualness that set off a slew of her internal alerts.

She quickly double-checked the program, and her son. It was some animal-rescue show that hadn't raised any red flags in her head when Ben had begged Dean to watch tv with him; even though being a mechanic had suddenly become Ben's highest (permitted) aspiration, it had been veterinarian before that, and animal shows were still a draw. The scene was something to do with horses in a boggy, flooded field, which didn't seem especially dark or horrific, at least no more than any of the other wounded and mistreated animals featured previously. Ben was still riveted on it, not noticeably bothered by Dean's exit or the nature of it. Which, if Lisa knew Dean – and she was getting there – was the intention.

She frowned, watching the show for a minute for what had set Dean off, but whatever it was, she wasn't going to find the clues on the screen.

When she joined him in the kitchen, he already had a beer in his hands. He didn't look up at her right away, but when he did it was with a broken, rueful half-smile that killed any question dead on her lips. She crossed to where he was leaning against the island's counter and, when he didn't turn around to face her but didn't pull away either, wrapped herself around him and kissed his shoulder before laying her cheek against it. She just held him, listening to the sound of his heartbeat where her ear nestled against his ribs, just below his shoulderblade, moving with him when he drew in a deep breath. She breathed with him, taking in the smell of him underneath her own brand of laundry soap, his body warmth making the scent emanate from the fabric. She let her length rest against his, settled her arms around his waist and just _held_ him.

"What was it?" she asked into his back, once the silence had become comfortable enough.

He laughed with a kind of hollow amusement, but didn't show any signs of pulling away. "I, uh ... it sounds so dumb. After everything I've seen..."

"After everything you've seen, it'd be dumb not to think random things would affect you," she said reasonably; she'd done a lot of reading on PTSD, although it wasn't helping as much as she'd expected. Even as she said it she felt his shoulders tense, in the way she'd come to recognize meant she'd missed his meaning. She bit her lip, and waited to find out if she'd put him off trying to explain.

"Point," Dean said after a minute, and snorted deprecatingly. "I wish it were just that. Sounds way more heroic."

She squeezed him, but didn't risk saying anything this time.

"No, it just ... it, ah ... reminded me of _The Neverending Story_."

She pulled her head back to meet the look he was giving her over his shoulder, frowning her bemusement. "What?"

He raised an eyebrow. "Yeah, it didn't sound any less stupid than it did in my head." He shook it, and took a drink. "Man. It's been a long time since I've been this much of a little bitch."

His laugh was about as convincing as the last one, and she tugged him to face a little more toward her. "Dean," she said gently, but firmly.

He looked down, then away. "I don't know. I can't remember when I saw it ... I think I must have been six. Maybe seven?" He thought about it for a minute, then shrugged. "Yeah, because I remember Sa–"

He closed down around that name, as he nearly always did when he found himself saying it unexpectedly. But as the months passed he had got better at recovering, or forcing himself to, as he did now, breathing hard and swallowing before finally clearing his throat. "Uh. So ... six or seven. I ... uh, I think I saw it on tv ... don't think I ever watched it more than once."

He lapsed back into silence, fiddling with the bottle in his hands, until she rested her chin on his shoulder and coaxed him again. "What happened?"

"I ... dunno. You remember that part with the horse?"

She frowned again; it had been a long time since she'd seen it either, but now the animal show they'd been watching actually did give a clue. "I think so. You mean in the swamp, where it sank?"

"Yeah... Freaked me right the hell out."

She did remember, now that he mentioned it. She didn't blame him.

He ran his hand through his hair and gave another snort. "It's weird, I can't remember anything else I ever watched – you know, on tv – hitting me like that. Not even anything else that happened in the movie. I even spent a while hugging the walls at night. Not really sure why – I guess I thought quicksand could just ... appear, and you'd never know it. Just walk right into it. I mean, the kid and his horse did, right? I guess it's how I thought it worked at the time."

Lisa had an odd, overlapping sense of memories of holding Ben while they talked through some irrational, movie-inspired fear of his, and smiled slightly. "What did your dad do?"

Dean's reflective frown became perplexed. "Dad? I don't think he knew."

Lisa had thought she was getting better at not showing surprise when the various revelations of Dean's past redefined her assumptions of what was normal, but she didn't manage to stop herself from blurting, "You didn't tell him?"

"Of course not. He already had enough problems. He didn't need to deal with mine, too."

She didn't manage to keep the anger out of her voice, either. "That's what he told you?"

Dean stilled, and she bit her lip again. But after a moment, he just leaned across and brushed a kiss against her eyebrow. "No," he said quietly. "It's just the way it was."

She nodded against his shoulder and kept herself from sighing. "Okay," she whispered, taking his acceptance for hers, at least for this conversation. Putting Dean on the defensive was not what he needed right now, that much she learned a while back. And who was she to judge what constituted good parenting in the world Dean grew up in?

He'd gone silent again, though. Not the frozen silence that chilled her to the heart; he was still fiddling with his beer, so it was a thinking silence. He always thought too much. She ducked under his arm and insinuated her hip between his and the counter, stretching up to catch his lips with hers until she was sure she had his attention back. When she drew back he gave her a tiny smile, touched his forehead to hers while far too many things happened behind his eyes. It reminded her all over again just how aware he was of what she was doing, but she tightened her arms around his waist and nuzzled into his neck, not apologizing and not letting him slip back into his own head.

"So tell me about it," she said.

"What do you mean?" he asked, and she very carefully did not think any thoughts about his father.

"I mean tell me what about it upset you. If you can," she added hastily.

"Ahh... I mean, it was, you know ... freaky. The black mud, the horse screaming, getting sucked down..." He cleared his throat and restated the obvious. "Freaky."

"Yeah," she agreed, and smiled just a little to keep the questioning light, less threatening. "But then, that wasn't the only freaky thing in the movie. I mean..."

"True," he admitted, slightly reluctantly, and Lisa waited to see if she needed to prompt him again. Just as she began to form the next question in her mind, he shrugged. "I don't remember much of the rest of the movie. I don't think I really cared what happened, after that." He paused in thought for a moment, then resumed the subject. "But it was like ... here's this kid, this warrior, all strong and brave and true – not like that other kid, what a weiner – and he's setting off entrusted with saving the world ... just him, on his own. No one else. But that's okay, even if there's no one to really help him, 'cause he's got his horse, and they went everywhere together and meant the world to each other, you know? I mean ... it was his _horse_. It wasn't just his responsibility, it was his companion ... it was like it was really his home – he was a warrior from the plains people, they were nomadic, right?"

Lisa made a vaguely affirmative noise; she honestly couldn't remember, but it sounded right and she didn't want to break the flow.

"And then ... he leads them both into that swamp, and ... they just start sinking, and there's – there's just nothing he can do to stop it. No matter what he does, and his horse trusted him, and he couldn't stop it, he wasn't strong enough, he couldn't –" Dean broke off, but a dam had broken and the scene kept pouring out of him anyway. "It was so suffocating and they were both screaming and he was sobbing and they're struggling with everything they have but it didn't matter and he couldn't hold on to it, couldn't save it, it just ... it just got pulled right down until it was lost, gone, like it never..."

He took a deep, terrible breath like he wasn't even aware he was doing it, her hold around him telling her of the subtle shudder that ran through him. "Then he pulls himself up by the tree and – and then he _went on_. I ... I never ... it was like I couldn't move on with him in the movie, like I was still stuck there, right there at the edge of the quicksand where I could _feel_ it being sucked down and I could never understand how he could get up and keep going, how he could go on when he'd lost his horse. How could he ever leave it behind like that?"

Dean turned the full force of the question on her with his eyes, with all the lost bewilderment of a six year-old with no paradigm for that scale of grief. No, she corrected herself; no paradigm for moving _past_ that scale of grief. She opened her mouth, but even as she did she knew she had no words to help him.

"I don't know," she said, unable to keep the rasp of tears from her voice.

He stared back at her, unfathomable, as she had a desperate sense of hatches battening shut, flow controls clinically re-establishing after the crest of the flood had passed. Before she could think of anything to stop it – she'd never yet worked out how – that cool, detached humor was sliding into place.

"Yeah, well –" and a sip of beer closed him off completely, "– kids get the weirdest ideas in their heads. Speaking of which, once he's finished watching his pansy bleeding-heart animal shows, tell that one that I'm out working on the truck if he wants to join. After his chores though."

"Yeah," Lisa agreed unhappily, but he was already turning, and she all she could do was watch him walk away.


	14. into the black

3.02

**Sam: How many dying wishes are you gonna get?**  
**Dean: As many as I can squeeze out!**

* * *

**Into the Black**

Sam, Dean

* * *

Rock crunched underfoot, black and blistered, decently apocalyptic under the broiled sky. Thin atmosphere, hotter than Hell's highest thermostat by a hundred degrees, easy. The knowledge was filed away for some unknown, unneeded future reference. As was the chemical taste of each lungful, fuming in each tiny impervious air sac (pulmonary alveolus; Mrs Dickinson, Miller Elementary, 5th grade). The sun seared down from several lengths above the horizon, too big and bright, freakish – but not alien. Not alien at all. (Loss of hydrostatic equilibrium, exiting main-sequence phase of stellar evolution; astrophysics fascination fostered by reading _A Brief History of Time_ to show off, 2nd year Stanford.)

He cataloged all of it neatly; he liked to know.

Before him, pointing at the smouldering sun, rose a long, narrow slope. He set out with steady strides, and now he could feel time's rapids whipping around him, catching on his footprints, disintegrating into craters and eons in his wake. By halfway up, the sun had inched larger and cooler, as though feeling its way outward, cautious. (Core hydrogen depleted, subgiant phase of stellar evolution.) The landscape had taken on a baleful tint under its orange rays, creaking eerily. He paused, took stock with that same expression of calm curiosity, until he looked up ahead.

At the peak, only now visible against the dispersed glare, sat a figure. For the first time since he'd arrived, his heart picked up speed a little. Though facing away, still half burned out by the flares of light, even from this distance and after all this time, it was the most familiar figure in the world. Not the familiarity of his wife, a familiarity learned and earned, every inch of her, and delighted in the learning (lover; he _loved_ to know). No, this familiarity was bred in bone, marrow and blood, knowledge impossible to excise.

(Brother.)

He resumed climbing, a little faster than before. There was no movement but his, no sign he was approaching the very last living thing on earth rather than a statue, with this massive slough of stone for a shadow cast across the land. For the first part, he didn't need a sign. The second part, though, he wasn't so sure.

The thermostat climbed with him; the sun was bigger now. At least ten times the diameter it had been when he started and only expanding faster, its blood-light reaching for the whole world. (There was always something trying to take over the place, fuck knew why.) He breached the crest into the full force of it, slowed to a stop, a pace off his brother's shoulder and no shadows left.

He slung his hands on his hips, surveyed the crackled wreckage of a vista, and offered his appraisal. "Hm."

His brother's voice, when it came, was rusty. "Not a seller's market."

He snorted, and only then did his brother twitch a slow look over his shoulder, little more than a corner of the eye, before returning face forward.

"You're here." It was flat, but the question sounded underneath (what are you doing here), surprised but not surprised (they were long past surprise, years and apocalypses and ages past surprised).

"Yeah, well," he answered.

His brother nodded. What more needed saying?

They remained that way awhile, bearing witness to the sun's conquest of the sky. Through his soles, he could feel the the planet slip its heft and spin, looping out further and further as the sun hemorrhaged mass and kept growing, growing, growing. He wondered if his brother sitting there could feel it too, the grand upheaval orchestrated by pure physics; or did he just ride it out, legs hung over an outcrop wide enough for two, wide like the hood of a car, poised to drive into the final sunset?

The sun's disc bore down along the horizon, taking up a third of the sky. Heat had been rendered meaningless, but the light was dull and hungry, battering at them with sheer expanse what it had lost in brilliance. It dyed his brother's hands brown-red in their thoughtlessly deft movements, pulling a flask from the inside jacket pocket, twist, tip, swallow.

He didn't recognize it, nor the jacket. Flasks and jackets wore through, got replaced. (Not like a body, or a car, renewed cell by cell, part by part, for as long as those who owned them cared to keep them running.) When it was held out, his brother's arm stretched up and back with minimum ceremony, he took it. The taste simmered on his tongue and _that_ he recognized. He closed his eyes, let the past wash through him (tasted like hot seat-leather and gasoline, rocksalt and metal, gravedirt, musty books, fire). It didn't hurt, anymore.

He nudged his brother's shoulder with his knee: move over. His brother looked up then, startled, but did, making a gap at his side the size of old habits whose death had been harder than most.

He sat, took another sip, and handed the flask back. Ahead of them, the sun had swallowed more than half the sky, and stopped, fuzzy and confused at the edges (red giant branch phase of stellar evolution, a shell of hydrogen fusion around a collapsing helium core). Below their dangling feet, rivers of molten rock overflowed, joined, became oceans. His hand landed on a loose chip of stone behind him, and he lobbed it, watching it fall. It disintegrated before it ever hit the surface.

"So." He picked up another stone, threw it harder, tracking the parabola. "You hanging out here for fun, or is this somebody's idea of a joke?"

His brother took his sip. "I called in a favor. Big guy owed me a few. Or he was just in that weird giving mood he gets, it's hard to tell."

He threw his next stone as far as he could, out over a world that was nothing but a twisted dead welt of red and black and on fire. It was certainly _impressive_, in its gruesome way, but – "Seriously?"

His brother squinted at him. "Weird giving mood it is, then, since you're here to be a pain in my ass."

"Jerkface. I chose to come."

Another sip might have hidden a smile. After he launched a fourth hunk of stone out, his brother picked up his own piece, hefted it, flung it. They passed the time silently, swapping the flask back and forth, chucking stones into the slag under their sullen monster sun; the competition was old enough to have become both endless and meaningless, but he was pretty sure he'd got the farthest.

After a while of this, a stillness beside him caught his attention. His brother had finished off the last mouthful in the flask, and was now staring down at it in his hands. Every line of his body betrayed his age (more than years, such numbers no longer applied), weariness clinging and clogging like vines on that unmoving not-a-statue of him.

That had been the deal, the final trade in their life and death, death and life round-and-round. The last promise his brother ever made him had been that his death would stick. Off the board and off the table (forever and ever, amen). In payment, his brother remained, living so that he could die. (His brother had never learned the knack of staying dead anyhow.) A valuable gamepiece in play or in reserve, a trump card gambled on by those arrogant enough, foolish enough, desperate enough not to wonder who he was a trump card _for_.

In front of them, all the way to the horizon, the planet cindered like a pyre. He sighed, the revelation quiet. "You wanted to watch the world end."

His brother didn't react straight away. When he did, it was to toss the flask over the edge into oblivion. "Not as much as I wanted to sit on my sweet bippy and do fuck-all about it coming down."

The spot the flask might have landed was a long way down. He studied it for a minute, then replaced the stone in his hand to where he'd got it. "Want me to leave?"

Another pause, long, long, the kind he knew oh so well. The kind upon which he'd seen the whole world turn. He waited, unneeded breath held in his throat, as if to burn.

Then his brother straightened, dragging the long lines of age back deep inside, shrugging at him like it was easy, like his answer didn't tremor. "Nah. It's cool."

He nodded. "Good."

This time, there was no flask to hide the grin behind. "Such a sap."

"Well, you're such a –"

"... Whoa."

They'd both rocked back a little, blinking, when the sun abruptly released the sky, crumpling back to almost normal size and color. For a few seconds, he felt almost blind in the reduced glare, while all around them the planet creaked and cooled.

"Dude! That was the helium flash!"

His brother side-eyed him. "The what?"

"The helium flash. It's like, when the core gets dense and hot enough to ignite helium fusion, and for a few seconds there's this crazy intense star-sized explosion. And then the core starts expanding again –"

"Dude, there was no flash. It got _smaller_."

"Yeah, that was the burning hydrogen envelope that shrunk."

"But – now it's helium?"

"Well, the hydrogen shell is still there, but underneath, yeah, and underneath that there's an inert core of carbon and oxygen forming, and it's called the asymptotic giant branch phase because –"

His brother gave a theatrical groan. "Trust you to geek out all over my retirement party."

He grinned, wide. "Just – watch. This's going to get seriously cool. Trust me."

His brother's rolled eyes completely failed to mask the affection underneath, but the sun was already swelling again, red and fast and vicious to eat up lost ground. "Huh," he conceded.

Then the first thermal pulse hit them, hammering the world white. There was barely time to recover before another followed, and another and another, each bigger and brighter and faster than the last, shredding the huge sun and whipping out the debris. All they could do was hold tight, to a planet bucking in its orbit while the last haze of atmosphere scoured away.

He blinked, and blinked again, still half-braced. It seemed to be finished, but all he could see was whited-out blackness – had it blinded him, or ... but no. The sky above was the void-color of space, his eyes slowly adjusting to the brilliant stud in the sky that was all that was left of the earth's star (exposed carbon and oxygen core, the white dwarf remnant of stellar evolution). He looked up, able to pick out a few other dots, the brightest night-time stars emerging in the dark as though through big-city light pollution.

It was only when he felt his brother follow his look upward that he realized they each had a hand tangled in the other's shirt and jacket, gripping unthinkingly tight. They exchanged shaken smiles that might have been a tiny bit sheepish, and let go.

"Wow," he offered.

"Yeah," his brother agreed. "So ... the fireworks are over?"

He nodded, taking a moment as the awe of it all caught up with him. "Should be. It's just a glowing ember up there now. Of course, it's so hot it'll take trillions of years to go out completely."

His brother eyed it, then got an expression he hadn't seen in far too long. "Looks like you can burn out _and_ fade away!"

He should groan. Roll his eyes. Push the desire to laugh way down, not encourage such terrible jokes. But that so-damn-pleased-with-himself grin lit up his brother's face, and it really had been so long that he couldn't even remember _how_ to scoff.

The laugh burst free and honest, ringing into the black, miraculous and bizarrely fitting to knell the death of the world, not in oceans of blood but of natural old age. A wash of gratitude surprised him, gratitude that however the laws of physics had been wrinkled around their vantage point, that sound had not been lost. (So much had been lost, so very, very much.)

His brother's eyes were shining, even if he only caught them for a moment before his brother could shy them away, clear his throat, pretend to be fascinated by the horizon. The Milky Way was emerging there (dispersing planetary nebula scattering less light), the majestic stellar road a faint smear in the sky, as enduring and distant as memory.

Maybe, he thought, for all this time, this had been worth waiting for.

The moment his laugh died away, he felt the release in their orbit, the beginnings of a slow spiral inward. Their disintegrating planet would fall into the last of their sun and disappear from the face of existence. He raised his face to the universe, which would continue to spin and shine and sing its song and never ever notice they'd gone. (It felt like closure.)

Then his brother cleared his throat again, voice soft and naked and spoken down at his own hands. "Thanks for coming, Sammy."

Maybe, he thought, there would be more to be said, after all. He got up, put his hand on his brother's shoulder.

"Come on, Dean. Let's go home."


End file.
